[0.4] End Game Build Guide: Apocalypse Storm Wyvern-Bear [BOTW Submission]

End game Druid/Shaman build. Utilizes Wyvern and Bear attack skills with synergies, coupled with persistent storm spells, to deal massive amounts of physical, fire, and lightning damage.

Build In Action

Clear Example: https://youtu.be/nnU6-Bs3lZw?si=S88T3FBVk89dx10P

Boss Example: https://youtu.be/Rrp-_iTomSE?si=Po5079RQ5JEVNvSG

Pros:
High Damage, Survivability, and Sustain.
Medium to High Clear Speed
Has both range and melee options
Gear is very flexible, minimal uniques required, making setting this up pretty affordable.

Cons:
Low Movement Speed due to Boot Slot limitations.
Requires High intensity skill rotation to maximize damage scaling. Make sure you have comfortable key binds, you'll need them!

Color Legend:
Spell, Attack, and Aura Skills
Skill Tree Passives
Ascendancies
Support Gems
Various Equipment

Core Foundation:

The idea behind this build is to rain down meteors and storms while you use shapeshifter attacks. You open combat by throwing down a few persistent storm spells to deal consistent elemental damage. Then, we go into Bear and Wyvern form to deal damage until it is time to recast our persistent storm spells.

In roughly 4-8 second intervals, we will weave different spell and attack combinations, swapping weapon sets frequently to scale damage. We also stack rage to further boost attack and elemental spell damage

Each shapeshift form has some passive benefits to consider. You will primarily shift between Wyvern and Bear.

While you are in Bear form, you have extra armour, making you significantly more tanky. You also want to keep high uptime in bear form while Walking Calamity is active to empower your Bear attack skills.

While you are in Wyvern form, you have faster energy shield recharge time. Unfortunately, this goes largely unused, as we have Zealot’s Oath and do not have energy shield recharge.

Werewolf form offers extra movement speed. It can be easily utilized by changing your default attack from Maul to Shred. I prefer to stick with Maul for the extra rage generation, armour, and Walking Calamity uptime.

The main idea is to trigger ‘recency’ buffs for damage scaling. These are boons that can be triggered about every 4-8 seconds, depending on the buff. In this build, shapeshifting/weapon swapping is used as one of our primary triggers. Start in Bear to stun and clear enemies. Take advantage of stun and corpses to generate power charges, empowering your Wyvern’s Flame Breath for massive damage

Passive Tree Principles:
Notable Passives such as Shifted Strikes and Wolf’s Howl boost attack damage and critical strike chance if we have shapeshifted recently. Emoldening Casts and Enhancing Attacks further scale damage based on how many different spell and attack skills you’ve used within the last 8 seconds. With these notable passives, using different attacks boosts your spells, and using different spells boosts your attack.

Boon of the Beast gives a significant boost to spell damage based on how long you have been shapeshifted, up to 8 seconds. To maintain ‘recency buffs’, we swap between Bear and Wyvern forms about every 4 seconds. In doing so, we can spend about 8 seconds total shapeshifted. Then, when switch to human form, cast an assortment of storm/persistent spells to inflict high elemental and physical damage.

For our ascendancy, we are going with Shaman. We will use the Furious Wellspring and Bringer of Apocalypse branches to boost rage, scale fire and lightning damage, and gain access to the spell skill Apocalypse.

For Weapon Set 1 (Staff) Passive Points:
Allocate passives that only scale spell damage, such as Mystical Rage to scale spell damage with rage (lesser version of Druidic Champion from the Shaman tree)

For Weapon Set 2 (Talisman) Passive Points:
Allocate passives that only apply while shapeshifted, such as Hide of the Bear and Spirit of the Wyvern, increasing damage while shapeshifted. Take Primal Rage to boost total rage while shapeshifted, further scaling attack damage

Jewel Sockets:
These are pretty optional. I primarily use Sapphire jewels with modes to boost elemental damage, energy shield, and other utilities. Use these as you see fit to add either more survivability or damage depending on your particular needs.

Rotation and Interactions:


General Shapeshift Rotation Order:

Start in Bear Form for at least 8 seconds before combat to proc Boon of the Beast, then shapeshift to Human and use the spell rotation before shifting back to Bear.

Human Spellcasting --> Bear --> Wyvern. After about 4-8 seconds shapeshifted --> Human Spellcasting and repeat

Bear Attack Skills

Walking Calamity grants a buff that rains down meteors and adds fire damage to attacks, bypassing enemy resistances thanks to the use of Fire Penetration support on attacks. It also generates burning ground to combo with Tornado . It is powered by rage, which is generated using Eternal Rage and Maul. Switching to human can also charge up Walking Calamity quickly thanks to extra mana regen you can pick up on your staff.

Use Maul to generate extra rage. This also counts as a different attack skill for Enhancing Attacks, so try to weave it in your rotation.

Rampage is a main source of damage once empowered by Walking Calamity. Also offers more mobility and curse cleanse (explained later). Use this to clear enemies.

Furious Slam is a tool to prime stuns on tougher mobs, like rare monsters and bosses. Thanks to the combination of empowered slams, Stun III, and Brink II, we can build up stun very quickly. The latter support gem also makes it so that Furious Slam cannot stun enemies, which is perfect. This is because once the enemy is primed for stun, you can use Wing Blast to heavy stun and generate power charges, which is then used to empower Flame Breath on Wyvern.

Wyvern Attack Skills:

Devour is used to eat corpses and gain power charges while clearing. It also empowers attacks and grants significant life regen, providing excellent sustain when there are available corpses to eat. If you see a blue orb on an enemy, it means it's primed for cull. If you use devour to cull enemies, you will get a nice buff for your attacks due to Thrill of the Kill II. Flasks and Charms also benefit from the skill, gaining charges when corpses are consumed. Using this combo, we can spam Health and Mana Flasks to boost sustain while clearing large enemy packs.

Wing Blast is also used to generate power charges by using it on enemies primed. This is your main power generation for boss fights when corpses are not available. It also boosts your spell damage upon heavy stunning thanks to Practical Magic II

After you have a power charge, they are spent to empower Flame Breath. This is your main source of damage in Wyvern and offers great single target and aoe damage.

Human Spells:

Use Thunderstorm to shock enemies and deal persistent lightning damage.

Use Tornado on hazardous terrain to deal persistent physical, lightning, and fire damage. We generate shocked ground by using the unique boots Wake of Destruction. Then, we get burning ground from Apocalypse and Bear Form’s Walking Calamity.

Elemental damage generates glory to cast Apocalypse, which you want to have up as much as possible. This combines nicely with Walking Calamity and Rampage

Use Consecrate for healing and sustain, and as another skill in your rotation for Emoldening Casts.


Resource Management:

The spells and skills we are casting demand significant mana, so we will convert those costs to life. This allows us to utilize life regen and Devour to upkeep our skill costs. There are two main options.

For a more offensive option, you could take Blood Magic. This converts all mana costs to live costs, at the cost of your entire mana pool. This gives you more flexibility for your support gem sets.

For a more defensive option, use Lifetap on your high cost attack and spell skills. This allows you to keep your mana pool, which can then be used to further boost survivability via Mind Over Matter. This will also protect your life, allowing the excess regen to regain energy shield more quickly. This is my preferred method. In my set up, I use Lifetap on:

Devour
Wing Blast
Flame Breath
Rampage
Furious Slam
Walking Calamity
Thunderstorm
Tornado

To make sure we can comfortably cast spells without depleting too much life, use Consecrate before casting high cost skills.

The only skill cast from our mana pool is Apocalypse no more than once every 20 seconds or so, reserving the rest of your mana for more effective hit points via Mind Over Matter

For chase Lineage Supports, I’m a fan of Zerphi’s Infamy. This works well on Flame Breath as you will typically have spent enough life to satisfy the glory requirements within your regular cooldown period. With level 24 Tornado, it takes approximately 5 casts to generate the glory required. By using Blood Magic or Lifetap, you won’t feel much of a difference and should be able to use Flame Breath off cooldown. While not required for this build, prioritize adding this as soon as you can afford it.

Damage Mitigation and Gear Set Up:

Zealot's Oath allows excess life regeneration to apply to energy shield. We also apply our armour to elemental damage thanks to Prism Guard and armour applies to elemental damage mods on equipment. We have access to great armour/es multipliers such as Reinforced Barrier, Projectile Bulwark, and Ancient Aegis. This pairs excellently with Devour, as the excess life regen applies to your energy shield. Consecrate and Draiocht Channeling help mitigate and remove the effects of curses (via channeling Flame Breath and Rampage and standing on Consecrated Ground). This is especially helpful for maps with Temporal Chains and Elemental Weakness.

To survive, we will use a combination of life, mana, life regeneration, armour, and energy shield. For attribute requirements, you need to be around 160 strength, 50 dexterity, and 90 intelligence. I prioritize getting these attributes on my ring and belt slots.

For elemental resistances, overcap to protect against things that penetrate or reduce your resistances. I aim for 100%.

While not mandatory, the unique item Wake of Destruction is highly recommended for shocking ground. You also need 50 spirit on your amulet or chest to reach the 150 total spirit requirement. This can be decreased slightly if you sacrifice some supports on Eternal Rage

For all equipment (minus boots if using Wake of Destruction), prioritize having flat life and at least one elemental resistance per piece.

For helmet, I use a pure armour base. Then, we can add extra energy shield via Runic Helm

For gloves and body armour, I prefer hybrid armour/es bases.

For the amulet slot, you may consider Beacon of Aziz for damage. However, since the majority of our elemental damage is Fire, I decided to rely more on Fire Penetration II support for consistent elemental damage. This opens up your amulet slot to be more defensive, offering more effective hit points and utility. I elected to use my amulet to boost maximum energy shield, life, life regen, life recoup, and allocate Blade Catcher via anointing for protection from crits.

For your rings, try to get % fire and lightning damage mods to scale your elemental damage. This is also where I get a lot of my elemental resistances.

For your helmet, glove, and body armour slots, try to get armour applies elemental damage mods. You will also want as much chaos resistance as you can get. In my set up, I rely mostly on my 3 socket boots, 2 socket helmet, and 1 socket gloves to boost chaos resistance via soul cores.

For your belt slot, prioritize fixing any remaining attribute and elemental resistance needs. I also like to grab some flat mana here for EHP. Then, change your travel attribute passive points in the tree as necessary to reach the total attribute requirements.

With my end game equipment set up, I aim to reach about 10k total base armour, 2.6k life, 3500 es, and 800 mana.

For the staff, I prefer to use a Sanctified Staff base for Consecrate. Then, prioritize getting as many ‘all spell’ levels as possible. I also prefer cast speed, extra damage as fire, and as much extra spell damage as possible. For optional suffixes, mana on kill is nice to help offset some of the downsides from Mind Over Matter

For the talisman, I prefer to use a Fury Talisman base to boost max rage, setting my default attack to the Bear’s Maul. This helps you stay in bear more frequently for Walking Calamity and extra different attack skill procs. Alternatively, you could use the Werewolf Shred instead for extra mobility while in Werewolf form, at the cost of less Bear form uptime. For mods, you want high flat physical damage, % increased physical damage, % of damage dealt as extra physical, % increased attack speed, and + level of all attack skills

You can select charms by preference situationally, but I prefer to stack protection against effects that immobilize you. For that reason, I use the following set up.

Thawing Charm to protect from Freeze. For mods, Guard on use can be nice for a little extra EHP.

For Utopia Stone Charm to protect from stuns. This also boosts armour by 200% during charm effect. This combos great with our multiplicative armour passive nodes Reinforced Barrier, Projectile Bulwark, and Blade Catcher


The Fall of the Axe Silver Charm to protect against slow and provide some extra Onslaught. This combos nicely with Draiocht Cleansing when you are dealing with Temporal Chains, as if you see you are inflicted with slow from temporal chains, you can become immune to slow, use one of the channeling skills Rampage or Flame Breath, and cleanse the curse before your Onslaught buff runs out.

Skill Tree: https://maxroll.gg/poe2/passive-tree/nf17m70u


Skill Set Up

Maul
Heft
Volcanic Eruption
Rage III
Fire Attunement
Rapid Attacks II

Apocalypse
Lightning Mastery
Considered Casting
Prolonged Duration II
Lightning Penetration
Fire Penetration II

Consecrate
Rapid Casting II
Persistent Ground III
Encroaching Ground
Expand


Furious Slam
Rapid Attacks II
Brink II
Rageforged II
Stun III
Lifetap

Rampage
Burgeon II
Rapid Attacks II
Momentum
Fire Penetration II
Lifetap


Walking Calamity
Fire Mastery
Prolonged Duration II
Fire Penetration II
Elemental Armament II
Lifetap

Devour
Empowered Sparks II
Thrill of the Kill II
Gorge
Soul Drain
Lifetap

Wing Blast
Impact Shockwave
Practical Magic II
Blind II
Charge Profusion II
Lifetap

Flame Breath
Rapid Attacks II
Burgeon II
Fire Penetration II
Zerphis Infamy (Use Elemental Armament II until you can afford this lineage support)
Lifetap


Thunderstorm
Coursing Current
Shock Conduction II
Static Shocks
Overabundance II
Lifetap

Tornado
Considered Casting
Rageforged II
Overabundance II
Swift Affliction II
Lifetap

Eternal Rage
Vitality II
Clarity I


Tips/Tricks: Tornado lasts about 8 seconds in this set up, so you can use this as your indicator for when you need to switch to human on the 8 second interval. There are also plenty of boons, so you can use these to gauge your 4-8 second intervals for shapeshifting and get a feel for the rotation.

Try to shapeshift between bear and wyvern about every 4 seconds.
Wing Blast and Maul come out quickly, so these are excellent tools to make a quick switch between Bear and Wyvern for recency damage buff uptime. Its okay to channel skills for longer than 4 seconds at times, but keep an eye on your rage and let it refill to full to maximize damage potential. Once you have been shapeshifted (between both Bear and Wyvern) for 8 seconds, switch to human and cast your persistent spells.

For power charge generation, Devour will supply more than enough while clearing mobs and having access to corpses.Wing Blast is only used to generate power charges on rare and boss monsters.

Gear Examples:

Staff - Weapon Set 1


Talisman - Weapon Set 2


Helmet


Body Armour


Gloves


Boots


Amulet


Ring 1


Ring 2


Belt


Charm 1


Charm 2


Charm 3


Jewel 1


Jewel 2


Jewel 3


Character Sheet


If you made it this far, thank you for reading! Hoping to be considered for build of the week. This is my first build guide, so would love to hear any feedback in the comments!

Good Luck Exile

Awesome build, written so well